Some years ago we were involved in the Scottish Governments “National Debate on Education” which meant we travelled around the country gathering answers to the government’s questions. During this period we had the opportunity to ask 3 very different groups of people some questions of our own. Each group, young people, parents/carers and teachers unanimously agreed on the answer to the following question:
“How does the quality of the student/teacher relationship effect learning outcomes?”
The answer they agreed upon was:
“The better the student/teacher relationship the better the potential for positive learning outcomes.”
Said in another way - If you are my teacher and I don’t like you, I might not show up to your class, if I do show up I might disengage or worse seek to passively or assertively disrupt your lesson. Conversely if I like you I’ll be motivated to attend, interested to engage with you and much more likely to learn from you.
It’s obvious that the better the relationship is between the student and the teacher the better the potential for learning is, we all remember the names of those teachers who inspired us!
Armed with the knowledge that learning is significantly impaired when the student/teacher relationship is less than constructive we set about working out how to build an educational resource that can contribute toward raised self-awareness for the young and provide teachers with an easy way to quickly get an understanding of the motivational wants, needs and characteristics of each young person they teach.
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